CPS removes 10 children from Laredo home

By Jason Buch :
June 14, 2013
: Updated: June 14, 2013 5:54pm

Police arrested Elsa Cuellar Alvarado, 55, and Miguel Alvarado, 63, at this house, seen in a Wednesday June 12, 2013 photo,in a neighborhood on Laredo's wealthy north side and charged them with nine counts of tampering with government documents. Neighbors said the family stood out because of they kept livestock at the house and there were so many children living there. State authorities have removed 10 children from the house.

Photo By Jason Buch/San Antonio Express-News

Elsa Cuellar Alvarado, 55, ran a church out of this building, seen in a June 13, 2013 photo, in central Laredo. She faces nine counts of tampering with government documents, which police allege she used to enroll other families' children in local schools. A woman who says she attended the church said she gave up her child to be raised by Cuellar.

Elsa Cuellar Alvarado

Elsa Cuellar Alvarado, 55, ran a church out of this building in Laredo.

LAREDO — Authorities in this border town are scrambling to learn the identities of 10 children taken by Child Protective Services from a sprawling home in one of its nicer neighborhoods.

CPS cited unsafe conditions when they removed the children from the home of Elsa Cuellar Alvarado in May. The rest of the story is far more strange, and many questions remain unanswered.

The children, ranging in age from 5 to 17, believe they're Cuellar Alvarado's sons and daughters and have lived with her since they were infants. But most of them are not related to each other and none of them appear to be related to Cuellar Alvarado, authorities said.

When school district officials opened an investigation into whether Cuellar Alvarado and her husband were falsifying documents, it looked like a standard case of someone in Laredo letting families from Nuevo Laredo claim residency at their address to attend U.S. schools, but all but four of the children are from the U.S.

The children will undergo DNA tests, but officials don't know who to compare it with.

Weeks after Cuellar Alvarado's arrest was splashed across the news media here, only one possible biological parent has come forward, a young woman who attended the small nondenominational church that Cuellar Alvarado, ran and says she was talked into giving up her son.